


with greener eyes, or as some far off star

by forcynics



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Vague references to sexual assault, post-3x07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 04:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13779480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: Julia offers her magic up willingly, and Alice doesn’t care why (there’s clearly awhy, clearly something very, very wrong with Julia). She takes it greedily and desperately, frantically grasping for the only thing in the world that might make her feel a little more at home in this new-old body, the onlyrightthing left in the world at all.It’s electrifying when she feels it again, her body crackling with it, her nerves her spine her blood her bones—it’s everywhere. She shudders, lets the feeling run down through her, and it’s like her skin fits a little more comfortably now, like an itch she hadn’t even been able to properly recognize has finally gone.Alice breathes, and it’s easier.





	with greener eyes, or as some far off star

**Author's Note:**

> i am super feeling these two lately but there is literally no other fic about them on ao3 so please help a girl out and don't let me be the only one
> 
> or just come freak out 'bout the show with me on [tumblr](http://forcynics.tumblr.com)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_“When we die, we come back different, like with greener eyes, or as some far off star.”_

a softer world #62  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Alice is mad, at first, that Julia has magic and she doesn’t.

It’s impossible to deny it. Her fingers twitch when she sees the other girl’s crackle with it, a rage _white hot pulsing_ in her chest, the kind of feeling that makes her want to explode, that makes her remember being immaterial and weightless and everywhere at once, so full of magic and made of magic and all her emotions heightened. Everything heightened, always.

If there was a way to rip Julia’s magic out of her, she would do it. If there was a way to trick it out of her, she would do it.

But it turns out she doesn’t have to.

Julia offers it up willingly, and Alice doesn’t care why (there’s clearly a _why_ , clearly something very, very wrong with Julia). She takes it greedily and desperately, frantically grasping for the only thing in the world that might make her feel a little more at home in this new-old body, the only _right_ thing left in the world at all.

It’s electrifying when she feels it again, her body crackling with it, her nerves her spine her blood her bones—it’s everywhere. She shudders, lets the feeling run down through her, and it’s like her skin fits a little more comfortably now, like an itch she hadn’t even been able to properly recognize has finally gone.

Alice breathes, and it’s easier.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It goes wrong, so very quickly.

It goes so very wrong, and Alice doesn’t want to admit it.

She knew it wouldn’t be easy, knew there would be challenges—her body would need to _adapt_ , there would be a settling period, but some part of her had figured that it wouldn’t affect her as badly as all the stories went. She’d be able to _handle_ it, her with her natural talent, superior to all the other dummies who had tried something like this before and failed. She’d just fight her way through it like she always did.

But this isn’t about skill, it’s about _biology_ , and she hates it, hates how she feels her very body betraying her—this stupid, limiting body she never wanted back in the first place, trapping her once again, worse than any box, worse than being stuck in Quentin’s head, because this time she was so, so close. She really thought she had it, and to taste failure so soon after getting magic back, after the relief of it already coursed through her, is all the more bitter.

The vampire is skeptical of her request, but everyone is skeptical of her these days—she’s used to it, buddy. Everyone looks at her like she’s made of glass or dynamite, like she’s a handful of bad decisions ready to go off, like she doesn’t know what’s best for herself.

But she would have done it.

If Julia hadn’t shown up at the car window, hadn’t dragged her out forcefully, hadn’t enticed her with the sight of _new magic_ , Alice would have drunk that vampire’s blood and damned her new body to a new kind of existence entirely. She would have drunk other people’s blood to keep her new magic and she would have watched her friends die and maybe, maybe at some point in the future (she would have had a long future ahead of her, after all) she would have regretted it, but for now, it would have been worth it.

It’s a struggle to think very far beyond _for now_ , these days.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Julia tells her about seeing Reynard, about wishing the magic away because it was his, and it comes more natural than Alice would have thought to offer her comfort. She doesn’t even really think of it that way—it’s just the truth. The magic felt like Julia and no one else.

“So what do we now?” she asks, tentative, trying not to sound too longing, but she still—it was right, giving Julia’s magic back, it was the only option, but the feeling of it is still fresh in her now, all over again, and she aches for it, craves it in a way she’s never craved anything else. But she doesn’t want to seem too eager, doesn’t want to give Julia reason to suspect she can’t be trusted or worry she’ll do something foolish again.

“We use my magic—” Julia says.

And god, Alice likes the sound of that, _we_ , like in a way she’ll be using the magic too, even if it’s through Julia’s fingers instead of her own.

“—and we get it all back.”

Alice grins, maybe the first grin she’s actually meant in this new body. She feels electric again and strangely hopeful. She believes Julia might really do this, more than she’s believed in anyone else trying to get magic back (full offense, Quentin).

Julia gets shit done.

“Does that sound good to you?” Julia asks, eyebrow raised, maybe rhetorical because Alice’s expression must be giving her away. She tries to tamp it down, nods quickly instead, and breathes out in a slow exhale.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, that sounds really good.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It turns out the first thing they have to do is wait. Quentin and Kady and Penny and that redhead girl are in the middle of their big plan to rescue the fourth key from the underworld, of all places, and there isn’t much room for Alice or Julia to join in there. And they won’t have any clue where to find the fifth key until they get the fourth. 

Hence, the waiting. 

Alice’s body is still restoring itself from the damage of Julia’s magic, which is frustrating enough, and it takes a day until she’s feeling entirely back to normal—or as close as she knows to normal in this body. But the others still haven’t returned by then and, well—

Alice is awful at waiting.

She can’t stop _moving_ , that’s the thing, can barely sleep at night from her inability to just be _still_. She might not have magic anymore, but she feels the lack of it like a ghost limb, like the memory of all that power that pulsed through her when she was a niffin has left such a mark on her psyche she can’t _not_ feel it, even though it’s gone. 

She paces, she climbs the stairs to the top floor and descends again in a huff, she throws herself on the couch and then inevitably gets back up on her feet. 

“They fucked up,” she grumbles, more to herself than Julia, who’s sitting in the armchair across the room reading some old book she probably thinks will come in handy later. Alice doesn’t even have the patience to read. How did she ever do that? How did she ever sit inside and study her books when the whole world was right outside the goddamn door and she had _magic_ at her disposal, to do whatever the hell she wanted with it?

Alice perches on the arm of the couch and taps her foot.

“They must have fucked up,” she repeats, a little louder, maybe wanting Julia to hear her after all. 

Julia rolls her eyes. “Give them time.” She doesn’t look up from her book, and turns the page rather deliberately to continue reading.

Alice gets up. She needs fresh air. She needs to move. She needs to get out of this claustrophobic fucking cottage.

Julia doesn’t ask where she’s going. Alice slams the door just to hear the noise of it.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She goes running, down one of the many paths that snake through the campus and eventually circle back. It’s like a ghost town. If there’s no magic anymore, there are no more magicians. Nothing to learn here, sorry folks.

Alice runs and runs and runs and runs as fast as she can, but it’s not fast enough. She gets out of breath quickly in this embarrassing body, has to stop, wheezing and barely able to keep herself upright.

She wants to run fast enough to burst out of herself, wants to dissolve into nothingness and let herself disperse through the air. She wants to be _magic_ again. 

Fuck.

She tries to make herself keep running but there’s no use. Her legs give out, her weak, spindly human legs that still remember how it felt to burst with so much energy she was practically electric, but just can’t replicate the feeling anymore.

The grass is damp and cold and soothing on her face when she rolls onto her stomach, wishing she could sink right into the earth and keep sinking and sinking until she came out the other side. 

She feels useless. Everyone else is off on a quest and she can’t do a damn thing except wait for them, and even her body can’t do the things she wants it to do.

Although perhaps trying to run in a skirt was her first mistake. A laugh scrapes out her throat when she realizes, when she finally takes note of how it’s tangled around her now, practically scrunched all the way to her waist from when she fell in the grass.

Human bodies and human clothing and so many things to consider before bolting out the door and running like she wants to achieve lift off. So many things to consider all the time, now that she’s not dead anymore.

Alice doesn’t even notice Julia until the other girl is standing over her. Julia’s hair hangs down around her face but doesn’t completely hide how perplexed she looks. She doesn’t ask questions, though, just lowers herself down to sit in the grass beside Alice.

“I hate waiting too,” she says after a moment, and Alice twists her head to study her better, watches her grimace as they lock eyes.

Alice doesn’t know what to say to that. Conversation is another thing she has to figure out all over again. The right tone of it, the right words, the right ways to sympathize instead of voicing every whim she feels.

She doesn’t know what to say, so she doesn’t say anything. After a moment, Julia reaches out and takes her hand, weaves their fingers together slowly. Her face furrows with concentration, and then she breathes out and her fingers twitch, interlaced as they are with Alice’s own, and tiny sparks shoot out from them.

Alice feels the warmth of it on her own fingers, _magic pure magic_ , and it catches her so by surprise that her eyes well up before she can even think to keep a straight face.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Julia squeezes her hand, and it sends a jolt of warmth all the way up Alice’s arm that has nothing to do with magic at all.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Night falls, and the hours go by, and after two bottles of wine between them the others still haven’t returned and Julia and Alice are draped lazily over opposite ends of the couch in the living room.

The wine helps, Alice reckons. She feels slower, heavier, more solid, and the urge to _keep moving_ has faded enough to be bearable. It’s still there, always there, but the pressure’s lessened.

“Where do you think we’ll have to go for the next key?” Julia asks.

Alice takes a very long sip of wine and sinks even deeper into the couch. “Probably somewhere even more impossible,” she spits out, and her voice sounds more bitter than she expected. “The bottom of the ocean or the top of the world. East of the sun and west of the moon.” 

She laughs, still bitter, but Julia laughs too.

“We’d figure that out,” she says easily, so casual, so confident—of course she is. The only girl in the world with magic still right there at her fingertips.

Giving it back may have been the right thing to do, but that doesn’t mean Alice isn’t still a little jealous. Horribly, painfully jealous, if she’s being honest. The wanting never seems to fade at all. She takes another, longer sip of wine.

When the glass is empty, she places it on the floor and shifts her weight, angling herself more towards Julia and narrowing her eyes at her.

“Do it again,” she says, before she can stop herself.

Julia frowns. “What are you talking about—” she starts to say, but she’s sitting up straighter, and she’s placing her glass on the floor too.

“Outside,” Alice says, sharp, and then has to catch her breath. “What you did outside. With my hand. And your magic.” She wets her lips, and inches closer. “Let me feel it again. Please.”

Julia looks nervous, and Alice wonders what emotions are transparent on her face right now, what kind of desperation and greed. She tries to relax. 

“ _Please_ ,” she repeats, softer this time.

Julia chews at her lip, just staring at her, just taking her in and trying to come to some sort of decision, and Alice doesn’t squirm. She just stares right back.

Eventually, Julia extends her hand. “Okay.”

Alice can’t help the shudder of relief any more than she can help the way her body instinctively arches forward, her fingers clasped with Julia’s before she even had the conscious thought to move.

This time, the sparks don’t evaporate as soon as they flare up from Julia’s skin, this time they hover, just hanging in the air, glowing around their hands, and Alice feels like her heart is going to burst out of her chest—it’s so _beautiful._

It’s so close and it’s still not hers and it feels better and worse all at once, soothing her while it tears the wound open all over again.

She’s squeezing Julia’s hand so tightly it must hurt, but the other girl says nothing. When the sparks finally putter out and Alice glances up, Julia is just staring at her. 

She still feels like she could burst out of herself at any second, burst into a thousand million pieces, and she lurches forward before she can think twice, pulling Julia closer with their tangled hands and kissing her.

Julia pulls away almost immediately, trying and failing to tug her hand out of Alice’s grip. Her other hand goes out between them to push at Alice’s chest lightly, and her eyes are wide.

“Whoah, whoah—” she starts to say. “What the fuck, Alice, is this some kind of—some kind of magic-by-proxy—”

Alice shakes her head, quickly. She thinks of how Julia’s voice went quiet when she talked about Reynard, and she thinks about the way she just threw herself at her, and she feels more guilty for that than anything else she’s said or done since Quentin brought her back.

“No.” she says. “No, no, I—I’m just—I’m still trying to remember how this body works, how to—” She stops, forces herself to slow down, to breathe. ”Say it again. Please.”

Julia looks more confused than ever, but her body relaxes. “What?”

“What you said before. About us. Finding the key, no matter where it is. Figuring this out.”

Julia’s mouth opens and closes, and her brow furrows, but she’s not looking at Alice like she’s crazy anymore, more like she’s just trying to piece it all together.

“We’ll figure this out?” She says it as a question at first, but Alice nods, and then she says it again, more assured this time. “We’ll figure this out. Whatever it takes. We’re going to bring magic back.”

And the thing is, when she says it, Alice _believes_ her, so much she closes her eyes for a second and just lets herself _feel_ that.

“Yes,” she says, quickly, and then opens her eyes and squeezes Julia’s hand tighter. “Everything just feels so _wrong_ ,” she whispers in a rush. “I’m—I’m _this_ again, whatever this is, but I don’t feel like her, not entirely, and I don’t even have magic the way she did—certainly not how _I_ did, and it’s just—it’s a lot to fucking figure out all at once.”

Julia sits up a little more, a little closer, and squeezes her hand back. With her other hand, she reaches up and strokes Alice’s hair out of her face, gently, almost like she’s seeing if Alice will let her.

Alice lets her.

Julia sweeps Alice’s hair behind her ear and trails her fingers down the side of her neck, leaves them dangling there. Everywhere she touches feels warm and electric and Alice honestly isn’t sure if it’s magic or that _something else_ she felt before in the grass. 

Julia leans closer, and Alice is pretty sure it’s the latter.

“What are you doing?” she asks quickly. Julia’s mouth is inches away from hers and it’s tempting, so distracting Alice can almost forget the ghost memories of magic that still ache all the way down through her body.

“You said you don’t remember how this body works,” Julia says quietly, simple as that, and it should be corny, but there’s a hesitancy in her voice, a kindness and a question.

Alice makes a noise—it takes a second to even register it came out of her own throat, faint and desperate and so, so intrigued—and then she’s kissing Julia and this time Julia doesn’t push her back. Julia’s mouth is warm and Julia’s hands are warm—their fingers have untangled, Alice scrambling for more, more, more—around the small of Julia’s back and pulling her in closer—and everything about this feels like an entirely new sensation, like something she forgot for an impossibly long time, like every part of her is burning up in an iridescent flame all over again, and surely, this will be the moment when this stupid body of hers can’t take it any longer, when the bursting in her chest finally swallows her whole.

But it doesn’t.

Julia eases over her and Alice lets herself fall back against the cushions, pulls Julia down with her and feels impossibly solid under the weight of her—impossibly present and moored to this moment, impossibly entrenched in this body of hers, warm and human and real.

Her eyes are closed, but she still feels it when Julia’s fingers leaves sparks along her skin.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
